


Finn the Human

by Routcliffe



Series: Halvbakt: Short Fantasies [3]
Category: Ylvis
Genre: Angst, Child Abuse, F/M, Impostor Syndrome, Mild Sexual Content, Suicidal Thoughts, Urban Fantasy, Ylvis Lite, a bit of violence, explicit pollination, mostly just changelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-11
Updated: 2017-05-11
Packaged: 2018-10-30 06:29:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10871037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Routcliffe/pseuds/Routcliffe
Summary: It is spring 2016.  Thanks to Vegard, Finn Weber is a free man with his whole life ahead of him. But he never expected to survive Ragnarok.  What’s he supposed to do now?  How will he survive?  What is his purpose?  What if people get tired of him?  What if someone finds out what he is?  What if he ruins everything?  He's in his second month of life, and he's already made powerful enemies.  But that might not be such a bad thing, because it turns out the way to convince Finn that he deserves to live is to tell him he doesn’t.





	Finn the Human

**Author's Note:**

> This overlaps with the end of _Unscheduled Broadcasts_. There's a pretty big gulf between Finn in Chapter 23, when he's begging Vegard and Brynjar to just let him die, and Chapter 24, seven months later, when he's got a home and a job and a solid relationship and a baby on the way and he's basically okay most of the time. I wanted to understand what happened there. And I wanted to find out how he handled one particular encounter.

\- I -

It was like the branches of a tree, like a network of capillaries, like a root system, like a tapestry inscribed in light, and it had been dimming, dimming in his sight as he dispersed along it, tumbling free, weightless finally, murmuring dreamy goodbyes that got complicated somehow, and then the brightness had flooded in again, too bright, and now brightness is all he is and it illuminates a path that stretches into forever, and Finn surges awake with a gasp.

The light is off to one side now, and he knows without looking at it that it’s Bifrost. He is in a tunnel outside of Varggrav, and he is still alive.

“My brother,” Brynjar says softly. There is blood on his forehead, dry now. He cradles Vegard’s body on his lap. Finn knows what has happened and it is worse than he could imagine. 

“Vegard!” he cries, and pounces on his original. Metal chimes on stone, and he ignores it. Vegard is warm. Breathing regularly. Unconscious. He checks twice, three times, to make sure Vegard is really alive, that this is not just wishful thinking. His voice shakes. “Brynjar, what did you do?”

“I accepted his offer,” Brynjar says. “He are safe, Finn. I wouldst not have allowed him otherwise.”

Finn only shakes his head, back and forth, back and forth, until he gets dizzy. He sits for a moment, rubbing at the dried blood on his own forehead, trying to erase it. He takes Vegard off Brynjar’s lap and gathers him into his arms and reaches out with senses that, curse him, it feels so good to use. Vegard will be safe. Brynjar, true to his word, has seen to it. He will be profoundly exhausted for the foreseeable future, but he will be safe.

So. It’s not over after all. Finn has a life now, a full life, and the way extends before him, shadowed and uncertain. He doesn’t know what to do. But Brynjar has seen to it that he will not walk it alone. That is one small relief, tinged with guilt and anxiety, because Brynjar has been friend and family and asset and saviour and hero, but he has also been another mouth to feed. Finn doesn’t know how he’s going to keep himself. He has no idea how he’s going to keep Brynjar.

“We will finding a way,” Brynjar says. “There are always a way, and we has Vegard’s vow of help.”

“We’ve taken quite enough from Vegard,” Finn says. He doesn’t want to be ungrateful, and he doesn’t want to shame Brynjar, but his tone is bitter, bitter, and he hates himself for it. 

“Nothing that was not freely and justfully and lovefully offered,” Brynjar counters. He puts his arms around both Finn and Vegard. His duster is filthy. Finn is quite sure that he’s no rose himself. They stay like that for a minute, perhaps two.

“Roo?” a voice says. 

Finn draws away from Vegard and Brynjar, and staggers to his feet. More metal bits clink to the ground, and this time he looks, and finds the flattened slugs that Vinael fired into him. 

Fenrir is a dark shape against the prismatic effulgence of Bifrost. He slowly moves his huge shaggy head forward, and then bumps his nose against the magical barrier that Finn really thought he was giving his life to put up. He makes a small aggrieved noise, and waits. 

Finn doesn’t think twice about approaching the great wolf. Sure, he’s made of meat now, and perhaps Fenrir will take his head off, but he doesn’t think so, and he doesn’t care that much. Fenrir pushes his nose against Finn’s cheek, and makes happy little noises. Finn reaches up and scratches the massive ruff. “Thank you for being...” His words catch in his throat. “I’ll come to visit when I can, okay?”

Maybe Vegard’s magic has changed more than just Finn’s body, and maybe it’s just that he can admit the possibility now, but wild vulpine thoughts press themselves into his head, and he understands that Fenrir is quite fond of him, and would have been devastated to be one of the instruments of his death, even accidentally. He is overjoyed that Finn is going to have a life. He thinks that Finn should seek out the female with the pointy thing.

“It doesn’t work that way, buddy,” Finn laughs softly. He points at Vegard. “He’s the one she _really_ likes. And that’s good, because he’s gonna need all the help he can get.”

Fenrir begs to differ, but what does a giant wolf know about any of it?

Finn sits with Fenrir for a long time, comforted by the weight of the large paws. Then Fenrir sniffs, and raises his head, and with a final rough lick of Finn’s face, gets up and bounds away, along Bifrost, in the direction of Asgard, where he can run and play and hunt and bask in the eternal summer. 

A few seconds later, Finn understands why: Bård has returned. “Thank god,” he says, when Finn descends from the bridge onto the tunnel floor. “You took your time healing! I was starting to worry. Hey, Vegard?” He shakes his brother a bit before saying to all of them, “The dálki and Per and company are waiting for us. They have a lot to sort out, but I gave them a statement, and they can escort the four of us to the outside if we leave right now. Come on, Vegard.”

“Prithee let him sleep,” Brynjar says. He has scrubbed the dried glyph off his forehead. Between him and Finn, they manage to get Vegard upright. They half carry, half drag him out of the chamber, to where the others wait with gadflies, and put him on the front of a gadfly, with Bård on the back to hold him and drive. Finn and Brynjar share another of the small, light hovering vehicles. Surely the dálki must have noticed the resemblance between him and Vegard, and Brynjar and Bård, but no one mentions it. He almost wishes someone would notice, and impound him. Then he would have a roof over his head, at least. Maybe if they decommission him right now, the drain on Vegard will ease. But then they would impound and decommission Brynjar as well, and Vegard would go to jail, and he doesn't want either of those things to happen.

The gadflies emerge into a misty indigo predawn. Finn can’t keep back the tears.

“Are you okay?” Bård asks gently. 

Finn looks at Vegard, sagging in Bård’s arms, and decides to tell him the truth. “I didn’t think I’d ever see the outside again.”

Bård grins. “We made it. So... now that we won, are you guys free now? Or are you still under compulsion? Can we fix that?”

“It are fixed,” Brynjar says, before Finn can answer. “We are free men.”

“Awesome. What are you going to do now?”

“I don’t know,” Finn says. “I don’t know what comes next. I’m scared.” 

Bård reaches across and rubs his arm briefly. “We’ll help where we can.”

“You two have already helped a lot,” Finn says. “More than... more than...” The cell phone in his pocket rings, then, and he looks at it in consternation before Bård laughs and motions for him to answer it.

Brynjar is sitting right behind him, but the phone is speaking in his voice. “I knows you think to ease your own bad conscience, Finn, but consider Bård.”

Finn _is_ considering Bård. He deserves to know what happened to his brother. What they took from him.

“Deserves he to know that he leaved you to die?”

That thought brings Finn up short. He hangs up, and slips the phone into his pocket. Behind him, Brynjar squeezes his arm.

Bård cocks his head, giving Finn a quizzical look. Finn can’t think how to answer him. 

“Look!” Brynjar says, gesturing to a pair of figures, a vehicle, and a large eight-legged shape on the road ahead. “We are met!”

\- II -

A week after returning to Oslo, Finn finds his way back to Vegard’s doorstep. He rings the bell.

Helene opens the door, and her eyes fly wide. “Oh! Finn. God, I’ll never get used to that.”

“Hi. I... I just wanted to see how Vegard is doing.”

She doesn’t invite him in; she slips out onto the porch, easing the door closed behind her. “He’s been really under the weather.” Her tone is light, but there’s a little tremble in her voice, and fear in her eyes.

“He’s going to be okay,” Finn promises, and holds out the box he has brought. “Here.” 

She smiles, and takes it from him. “Thank you.” She peeks. “ _Pain au chocolat_! He’ll love those. There’s nothing wrong with his appetite, thank goodness.” She looks searchingly into his face. “How... how are _you_ doing?”

“I’m okay. Brynjar and I have people to stay with. They’re very kind. Melantha’s boss pulled some strings and got us ID numbers yesterday.” He knows at a glance that she is getting cold in the chill spring air, that in a minute she’ll invite him in out of a sense of obligation. “I should get back to them, though.” He thinks a minute, fishes Melantha’s business card out of his pocket. “Here’s where I’m staying. If you need anything, anything at all, just call. Please.” He turns away, and tosses an awkward wave over his shoulder as he walks down the front steps.

\- III -

The quality of light is the first thing that alerts him that he is not in the bed allotted to him in the mansard room. His sleep-fogged brain tries again and again to puzzle out which way he’s lying, but it won’t square, and finally he wakes up enough that the combination of sunlight coming from the wrong direction and the feel of the silk sheets against his bare skin and the pleasant ache in his muscles reminds him: last night Melantha invited him to spend the night in her room.

For a moment, he basks in the memories, happier than he has ever been. Then he rolls over, seeking her, and finds the bed empty.

After three minutes in the bathroom to make himself minimally presentable--his curls are still a wild tangle, and his shirt is nowhere to be found--he puts on yesterday’s underwear and jeans, and pads out to the kitchen. 

She is there, wearing panties and the shirt he had on last night, her red-gold hair mussed, and she looks like the most divine creature in the world, any world. She smiles in that way that makes his knees weak, and sets a plate of breakfast in front of him. The scrambled eggs are cold and rubbery, and the toast is lightly carbonized, but Finn has eaten from dumpsters and he has gone without, and breakfast cooked by the most beautiful woman in the world is no hardship at all. 

“Thank you. Is it all right if I get myself a coffee?” he asks.

“Of course!” Sitting at the table, one leg tucked under her, she waits for him to pour a coffee and doctor it in the way he likes. He gives her a refill too, and adds milk and a touch of honey the way he knows she likes it. “Thank you,” she says. Then, “Finn, we need to talk.”

“Of course,” he says. The eggs are a hard lump in his throat. Maybe they started out that way; he can’t really tell. Of course. She is going to tell him that his time here is over, that she and Jessalyn have sheltered him and Brynjar for as long as is reasonable, and longer. He must make his own way now. He has no idea how. Would it be forward to ask her for names? People who could take an unskilled worker with no experience? He learns fast. He will work hard. 

“What is it that you _want_?” she asks him, sipping her coffee.

He works at his toast, thinking it over. If the thing that has made these past couple of weeks sweet is over now, really just oblivion. But that would be ungrateful. Done is done, and Vegard is lying abed, strength at a low ebb, because he wanted Finn to have a life. “Just to be useful,” he says in a small voice. 

“No, no, _no_ ,” she sighs, shaking her head. 

Even now, when she is tearing open a hole in his world, the way her ringlets bounce against her cheek does strange things to his heart. She pulls her chair close to him, and slips an arm around his shoulders. It is a wonderful feeling, and he doesn’t know if he can bear to give it up, but for now he relishes it. 

“Jessalyn wants to leave,” Melantha says. 

“What?” The word sticks in his throat, next to the eggs. This isn’t what he expected to hear, but it’s just a different kind of terrible. He knew Jess was disgusted and angry about walking in on them last week, but he had no idea... 

“No, shhhh, Finn, shhh.” She pets his curls, her mouth in a sympathetic little _moue_. “This has been a long time coming. I think... what happened the other day was just the last straw.”

“If Brynjar and I go, will she stay?”

“Don’t think like that,” she scolds. “And probably no. But there’s something else.” She catches his eye, and puts a finger under his chin so that he can’t look away. Her green eyes are sad, and she is going to say it now, while he’s lost in them. “I really love being with you, Finn. You are sweet and kind and funny and thoughtful and smart, and talking with you feels like talking to an old friend.”

“But...?”

“You still jump to attention whenever I speak to you. You _defer_ to me. Half the time you act like my servant. You never initiate anything, and you never tell me no.” She looks away from him. “It scares the hell out of me, because we’ve made love twice, now, and I still can’t tell if it’s because you wanted to or because I pressured you and you felt like it would be ungrateful to refuse me.”

“I wanted to, I meant it, of course I wanted to,” he says softly, and then gives her a small smile. “I don’t just lie back and think of Stonehenge.” He reaches up. Stops himself.

She catches his hand, both playful and stern. “Whatever you were going to do, do it.”

He bites his lip. It’s very silly, but she asked for it. What does he think he’s going to lose? He reaches up, to one of the buttons on her shirt, _his_ shirt, and toys with it. 

Her smile is radiant. “ _There._ That eases my mind more than anything you’ve said.”

This surprises him. “I... I don’t understand.”

“Because it’s the first spontaneous thing I’ve seen you do, that I could be sure you really wanted. And it is reassuringly affectionate.”

“I don’t understand,” Finn says again.

“What do you want, Finn? Honestly. If you had your druthers.”

His shoulders sag. With a look up at her to make sure it’s all right--she nods encouragingly--he tucks himself more securely into her arms. “That has never felt like a safe question.”

“It is now.”

He goes weak with relief. Then he thinks about it. “I don’t have the whole answer right now, and maybe I never will. But... I want the people I love to be safe and happy. I want to know if I’m bothering or imposing on them. I want, I guess, a roof over my head. Enough food. Something useful to do that pays the bills and I guess makes the world a better place, if I can.” He looks anxiously up at her. “Are those okay?”

“You don’t need anyone’s approval to _want_ things, Finn. But if you’re asking me if I think they’re reasonable, I do. Very much.”

“Well,” he says. He takes two deep breaths. And then he says, “Is it reasonable to want...? I mean, it’s just wanting, right? And we’re just talking.”

“Right.”

“I... really like... I mean... When we... I just...”

“Spit it out, Finn!”

“I love spending time with you. I love it when we talk, and when we sit together and just don’t say anything. I love when you touch me. I love the way you look, and the way you smell. I love when you curl up on the couch to read and nibble the end of your pen. I love that you’re wearing my shirt right now. I love it when you talk and I have no idea what you’re talking about. I love... The way things are right now is the happiest I’ve been since they made me, and it’s because of you, and what I want very much is more of you, and I’m sorry if that’s not my place but, but you asked, right?”

She kisses him until he’s flushed and addled and trembling. Then she whispers against his lips, “I’m not looking for a servant, and I’m not looking for a houseguest with benefits. But I would like very much to have you as my lover.”

“Nnnngh?” he says. 

“Whatever you’re stopping yourself from doing right now, I wish you’d do it.”

He reaches up and runs his fingers through her red-gold ringlets, and lightly over her smooth cheek, and rests his head on her shoulder. “I don’t understand,” he whispers. “I mean, I want to, I love it, but you’re not supposed to do any of this with changelings. And I am sure as hell not supposed to get all grabby with a lios alfr.”

“You’ve done what you’re _supposed to_ , Finn. Now you have choices.” She catches his fingers, and he thinks, with mingled dread and relief, that he has pushed too far and found her limit, but she only kisses his fingertips.

“But I’m still _me_.”

“Well, good, because that’s who I’ve been falling in love with.” 

“Me?” He draws in a shuddering breath. “I don’t understand.” He’s beginning to think he should have that on a t-shirt. 

“You don’t have to,” she whispers into his hair. 

“I love you too,” he says. And then, before he can stop himself, “Is that okay?” 

\- IV -

He turns up on Vegard’s doorstep on the weekend again. This time the pastries are filled with fruit and nuts. Melantha has taken him shopping for clothes, and she kept trying to nudge him away from the thrift store, but he’s well pleased with his brocade jacket and his beret, and it makes him definitely not look like Vegard. “Hi, Helene. Brought these.”

“Come on in,” she says, holding the door wide for him. 

“Thank you,” he says, and steps inside. The last time he entered Vegard’s home, it was as an intruder, a fraud. It means a lot to him, to be invited in. He sees the iron doorstop she threatened him with, and it chills him a little.

She must see it, because she touches his arm, as he is taking his boots off, and says, “When I told him you’d been by, he was very disappointed that he hadn’t gotten to see you. So why don’t you slip in and give those to him yourself?”

“How is he this week?” As he follows her through the kitchen, where he was duct-taped to a chair, Finn can feel his mood in freefall. All of this is because of him, and they are being so kind.

“Well, we know it’s not encephalitis. He’s losing weight. The doctor wants to test him for leukemia.” Her voice has gone very quiet.

“But...” Finn begins, and clams up. Maybe no one’s told Helene, and if not, then it’s not his place to tell. “I’m sure it’s not anything like that. I’m sure he’s going to be okay.”

“I hope you’re right,” she says, and knocks at the bedroom door. “Vegard? Vegard, Finn’s here.”

A sleepy voice says, “C’mon in.”

Vegard is in a t-shirt and sweatpants, propped up on pillows, at the centre of a nest of blankets. “Hey,” he says with a sweet, brilliant smile, blinking owlishly.

“Vegard. I... I...”

Vegard beckons. “C’mere.” He reaches up and gives Finn a hug, brief but surprisingly firm. “Mmm. How are you?”

“I... I’m good. But _you_...”

Vegard yawns, and waves Finn’s concern away with a twitch of his hand. “Par for the course. Helene doesn’t know, though.”

“I won’t tell her,” Finn vows. “How is your brother taking it?” 

“He doesn't have time to worry. I offered to do some things from home, but he says for now I should just rest.” He chuckles. “When I can stay awake long enough to be bored, I'll be back at it.”

“Here. I brought you calories.”

“Awesome! Thank you!” Vegard reaches into the box and takes a pastry. He motions for Finn to do the same. He spreads a kleenex as a napkin. 

“I just ate,” Finn says. This is a lie, but Vegard is going to need all the energy he can get. 

“I finished the last ones in two days,” Vegard tells him around a mouthful of crumbs. “A thousand heartfelt thanks. But I’m going to get so fat.” 

“You really won’t,” Finn assures him. “You need the fuel to heal.”

“So what are you doing now?” Vegard asks.

“Um. Well. Melantha and I are...” He’s not sure how to finish that sentence. It still feels presumptive. 

He doesn’t have to finish it. “Official now? Well, _that’s_ good,” Vegard says, reaching for a second pastry immediately. “She deserves a good guy. Just don’t let her order you around too much. She does that sometimes.”

“I think I might need it,” Finn confesses. “ _I_ don’t know what to do. I don’t know if I’ll ever know.”

“Everything is learnable,” Vegard yawns. “Gotta practice. If you can’t for you, start out doing it for someone else and work up to it.” 

“For someone else,” Finn echoes. It’s good advice. He thinks of all the things that he _has_ done, all the times he was fierce and brave and independent for the sake of Brynjar, who for awhile was too injured to care for himself. “I’ll try that.”

Vegard has taken one bite out of the second pastry, but as he holds it over the kleenex, it tumbles from his slack fingers. “Mm.” He blinks slowly. “Bloody hell. I have to go out for my appointment next week. I have no idea how...”

Finn thinks hard. “Do you have any jewellery?” 

“Mlrghf,” Vegard answers, head sinking back onto the pillows. 

Finn rifles through Vegard’s dresser drawers. He doesn’t seem to be much for adornments, and Finn doesn’t want to use the wedding ring, because Vegard is wearing that right now. Finally he decides on a heavy silver ring, bequeathed from one of Helene’s great great uncles. Finn holds it in his cupped hands, and calls on the threads of light that underlie everything, and breathes magic into it, coaxing the threads of the spell into the shapes that he needs. Then he wraps the ring in silk. 

He prods Vegard awake. “Hey,” Vegard says, smiling. “Sorry. I do that ridiculous amounts now.” He looks at the pastry upside down on the kleenex in front of him, picks it up, and takes another bite.

Finn shows him the silk-wrapped ring, and sticks it in the top drawer of Vegard’s dresser. “Take this out and wear it on the day of the appointment,” he says. “It should give you a few hours of extra energy.”

“Thank you,” Vegard says, with another of those long slow blinks. Finn rearranges the pillows so that he won’t hurt his neck sleeping funny, and slips out. 

At dinner that night, over gluey noodles and overdone beef and mushy peas, Finn asks Melantha to send him on errands. She only looks exasperated. “Finn, you’re not my servant boy!” 

He _should_ probably ask Jessalyn, but Melantha’s anger has cowed him. 

Brynjar says, “Finn, I has wished several times to go to the library, but I fear to go alone. If you wish an errand, I would be most grateful for a companion.”

\- V -

They walk out in the morning, going not to the Lambertseter branch, but along Kongsveien to the main branch in the city centre, twice as far away. It feels very strange. He and Brynjar have not gone out alone together since being freed. There is no compulsion acting on him. There is no duty to his original. There is no Melantha or Jessalyn or dálki to stop him if he does something wrong. The only task before him is one set for him by an equal. He could do anything. He could slip into the Stortinget, and run around naked. He could dive into Ekebergskråningen and live in the woods as a wild man. He could hitchhike back to Varggrav and get a job in the mine and visit Fenrir on his days off.

These are dangerous thoughts. A tram rumbles past. He turns away, and catches a glimpse of the harbour through the trees. He says to Brynjar, “You’re awfully quiet.”

“I seeked not to disturb your thinking, my brother.”

Finn shakes his head. “I’m not thinking anything good.”

“Thou thinkest of possibilities,” Brynjar says, laying a hand heavily on his shoulder.

Finn’s laugh borders on hysteria. “If you’re snooping, then you know that none of these possibilities deserve encouragement.”

Brynjar fixes the grey eye on him. “Some of the things you think would be hurtsome to carry out, and some illegal, and some merely foolish, and I knows that you will do none of them. But it are neither hurtsome nor illegal nor foolish to think them. I has worried for you, Finn, slipping from thralldom into the embrace of someone who are happy to tell you what to do. Do not choke off your possibilities; weigh them, and find them wanting, and in their weighing discover yourself. And then you will think of better possibilities.”

“ _What_ possibilities? We have no money. No standing. Nothing at all of our own. Mel and Jess are so kind, but, but... I already screwed up badly enough that Jess is leaving now. They’re sisters. And I drove them apart.”

Brynjar wags his head back and forth. “It were time for her. I... I myself sees not necessarily wanting to live with Melantha forever.”

Finn stops short, in the middle of the sidewalk. “You... you too?”

“Not now, and not soon, but I wouldst have my own space, Finn.” Brynjar nudges Finn's arm, and they keep walking.

“Where would you _go_?”

“I know not, yet. Only that it is a thing I want. If I can affording fuel for the Mazda, I has my choice. And were you to need space too, and I had it to give, thou wouldst be welcome.”

“Thank you,” Finn says. “But not now, right?”

“We are still new, Finn,” Brynjar assures him. “We has time.”

The librarians greet Brynjar by name. Finn gives him a dirty look, but he is grateful for the day out.

\- VI -

Brynjar invites him out again the next week. Melantha gives him a little bit of money for groceries, and a little bit extra for coffee. They glamour themselves as a couple of teenagers.

Finn finds a novel with a character called Finn, and Brynjar finds a coffee table book about the Hubble telescope. He keeps bouncing in his chair and plucking Finn’s sleeve and imploring that he look, _look_ at this, because the hydrogen in the Orion Nebula glows orange and pink and yellow and red, and oxygen glows green, and the Carina Nebula seventy-five hundred light years away has a bit that’s shaped like the head of the Loch Ness Monster if you look at it just right.

After the sixth time--Brynjar needs him to know that Hubble images are stored on a fifty-terabyte database and calibrated to remove each CCD-detector’s footprint because the pixels have different levels of light sensitivity--Finn says, “I think I need coffee.”

Brynjar’s face falls, and he slumps in his chair. “I are bothersome, Finn. Apologetifications.”

“You don’t need to apologize for being excited! It _is_ interesting, and I’m glad you’re with me today. Why don’t you mark the bits you want to show me, and when you’re done here, sign it out and come and find me and show me all at once?”

Brynjar agrees that that sounds fair, so Finn borrows _Vidunderbarn_ and wanders until he finds the Starbucks on Torggata. He could have a latte if he uses all of his coffee money, but he wants there to be enough left over for Brynjar to have something, so he gets a small Americano. It’s not warm enough yet to sit outside, but he can sit at the window. He reads, and watches the people, and watches the street. This is nice. The words on the page give him a bit of a headache, but otherwise, he could get to like this very much.

There is motion by him, and he thinks it’s Brynjar coming in, but the only person nearby is a young lios alfr, walking rapidly away. And there is now a small sealed envelope on his table. Finn wants to ask questions, but the elf is already out the door.

He opens the envelope, and finds a folded card. On the card, handwritten in elegant script, is a Gamle Oslo address, and a number that he is instructed to ask for, and a time. “Come alone,” it says.

He is still puzzling when Brynjar joins him, struggling with his walking stick, the coffee table book, a frappuccino for himself, and a latte for Finn. Finn is about to leap up to help him, but Brynjar shakes his head. He does the trip from counter to table in stages. “Innilokun Ríki,” he says by way of greeting. “The address are for the Oslo portal to Innilokun Ríki. The elf who deliverated it were in the service of a parent, who composed it in the service of Linnael Aruviel.” Finn knows that name, knows it must be a relative of Melantha’s, but he can’t place it until Brynjar says, “Melantha and Jessalyn’s father, who serveth a ten-year sentence for many attemptified murders, including that of Vegard. Also, Finn, you holds that book worrisomely close to your face.”

“He probably wonders what I’m doing with his daughter,” Finn muses. In some moods, he would be frantic, but right now he feels... capable. Curious, even. He raises his latte to Brynjar. “Thanks for this. How did you get money?”

“I telled a woman where to find her wedding ring, and she gived me one hundred kroner on the spot.”

Finn looks up at his brother, with his confidence and his wise grey eye and his lucrative powers and comprehensive knowledge of the library system. “How are you so... _together_?”

Brynjar barks out an incredulous laugh. “Asks the brother with the beautiful girlfriend and the pendifying standing application. I are together with nothing and no one, dear Finn.”

“You’re gainfully employed, and that’s more than I can say for me.”

Brynjar’s eyes widen in shock, and he shakes his head. “Wonder you ever, Finn, why all the fortune-tellers are fake?”

“Are they?” 

“Here, yes, and even the real ones use it only in times of direst need.” Brynjar leaned close. “Ofttimes people want not the truth. Even when they thinking they do. For exemplification, I could tell you--”

Finn recoils. “Don’t tell me anything about me! Thanks. Sorry.” 

Brynjar chuckles at him, and drinks his frappuccino, and tells him instead about M-51, the Whirlpool Galaxy, where the areas that form stars look like red marbling against its white spiral.

\- VII -

Finn wracks his brain to come up with a cover story. Finally, he ploughs through _Vidunderbarn_ despite the headache, and then reads through the paper she’s working on, and scours the library database. He will tell her, he decides, that he noticed a book called _Minervas Døtre_ , that she might find helpful, and then he will offer to get it, and say he might as well pick up another for himself, and he might be awhile because he likes the library. All of these are true things.

On the day named in the note, Melantha gets a call in the morning. Gisela has a project for her. She’ll be out all day, probably; can he amuse himself? 

“I’ll be okay,” he says. “I’ll find something.”

He shows up at the address early. The elves maintain two kinds of buildings. Some of them are glamoured to be ugly to humans, but sumptuous to those who can see. And some of them, like this one, are just ugly. It makes sense, he supposes. You don’t want regular humans finding these things appealing, and stumbling into one. 

He rings the bell. A nisse opens the door. “State your business,” she says, sounding bored. 

“I’m, uh, Finn Weber?”

She checks a list. “Are you presenting yourself for incarceration?”

“No! No. A visit. I’m visiting Linnael Aruviel. I... He...” Finn hands her the folded card.

She snorts at it, and shakes her head. “All right. Go on through, and show this to the guard. That’s rich.”

She steps aside, and motions him to a long, dim corridor. Halfway down, the air changes. The walls change. He can feel the edge of the world, and his breath catches. It’s a little like nausea, and a little like euphoria. He takes another step, and he is not in Midgard anymore. 

There is another door, this one steel, with a guard in front of it. Finn is starting to shake. This is not a pleasant place. It looks like the American prisons he sees on TV, but it feels... like it is trying very hard to look like the American prisons he sees on TV. He could peer beyond the glamour but he is deeply afraid of what he might see. He holds the card out. The guard looks at it, and nods. She pats him down, taking his pen from him, and casts a low-level binding spell on him before opening the door. 

This corridor has more doors on either side. Another guard meets him, sighs at the invitation, and conducts him to a room. There is nothing in it but a table and two chairs, and a tall and beautiful lios alfr who even in his prison greens manages to look regal. The door stays open. The guard takes up a position outside. Finn enters, and approaches the table.

Linnael Aruviel waves a hand, and casts a light shield spell. Not enough to break any rules, Finn imagines; just to give them a bit of privacy. 

“Finn,” the elf says, and his voice is warm. “It’s good to finally meet you. I’ve heard a lot about you.” Across the table, he extends a hand. 

Finn is wary, something in the back of his mind balking before he has a chance to process it properly, but he extends his own hand, and the elf takes it in a firm grip. In a lightning motion, then, he pins the back of Finn’s hand to the table. With his free hand, he plucks a long gleaming hatpin from where it has been woven into the hair at his hairline, and drives it into the fleshy web between Finn’s finger and his thumb. 

The pain steals Finn’s breath, but he had nine days to learn the futility of screaming, and he has learned his lesson well. But something in his body language must have caught the attention of the guard at the door, because from the other side of the curtain a voice calls, “Everything okay, Mr. Weber?”

Aruviel jerks the pin out, and gestures at the bead of fluid oozing from the puncture. It is no longer amber, but it has been not quite one month, the overwriting is not yet complete, and it is still the wrong colour and viscosity for blood, and underneath the smell of copper is something sweetly resinous. “I will tell them everything,” he hisses.

“We’re fine,” Finn says, impressed at how calm his voice sounds. He pulls his hand back, and sits down. 

“I knew it,” Aruviel says, leaning back with a smirk on his face. With a deft, casual motion, he weaves the pin back into his hairline, looking as if he's just brushing a stray lock from the side of his face. “My associates said that my daughter had taken up with Vegard Ylvisåker, but you’re not Vegard. My associates say that you have done a great many things that the Vegard I met nine years ago could not have done.”

“You of all people should know better than to underestimate Vegard,” Finn says. 

Aruviel’s face goes stormy. “But we’re not here to talk about Vegard, changeling. We’re here to talk about you doing gods-know-what with a maiden of the Bright Court, and _my little girl_.”

“She is a formidable woman, my lord, and I treasure her.”

Aruviel shakes his head. “You don’t treasure her. You _can’t_ treasure her. You’re not capable. It is, I suppose, remarkable that you think you are. But you can’t _love_. You can’t even understand how you fall short.”

“Is that so?” Finn says. He is, once again, impressed with the steadiness of his voice. He thinks of Bård. He wonders if there is a job out there that would rely on his poker face.

Aruviel’s face twists with rage. “I was in the Victory of the Light. I _made_ changelings. I worked with them. I disposed of them. I’ve put down an entire army of creatures like you. Don’t presume to question my understanding of changelings.”

“And I’ve been one,” Finn says quietly. He should probably shut up now, but he doesn’t see how saying more will make things worse. “I know exactly what it’s like, and what I’m capable of. And I know that becoming a man didn’t change me that much.” 

“A man?” Aruviel scoffs. “A man isn’t what your cells are made of. A man is pride, and honour, and tradition, and education. He is the sum of his connections to others and to his realm. You cannot counterfeit these things. You cannot impose them from the outside. The foundations of your so-called personality are programming; they’re not _real_.” He drums an index finger against Finn’s temple until Finn recoils. “Do you _think_ , boy?”

Finn says, “Do I think what?” He looks down at the table in front of him, but there is a great deep quiet awakening in him, and he is beginning to feel something that is not guilt and not terror.

“Do you have _thoughts_? Do you believe you have them? You don’t, you know. The only reason you think you do is that you have nothing to compare them to.” Linnael Aruviel leans forward and says, with rock-solid self-assurance, “I don’t care if you’re flesh and blood, changeling. You will never be a man. You will only ever be a man’s shadow. A _fool’s_ shadow.” He shakes his head in sorrow and disgust. “My daughter is a very clever little girl, but sometimes, she is an utter dimwit.”

Finn’s shoulders stiffen. His bowed back straightens, and he meets Lord Aruviel’s eyes, which widen in surprise. “Do. Not. Speak. Of. Her. That. Way.”

The elf’s face smoothes into bland smugness again. “Oh, she must have installed the protection module. At least she had that much forethought.”

Finn stands. “I don’t care what you think. If you’re that wrong about your own daughter, your _brilliant_ and _wise_ and _kind_ daughter who I very much _do_ love to the point of distraction, then I certainly don’t expect you to be right about me.” He turns on his heel, and tears the curtain of magic. “We’re done here, thanks.” The guard enters. Aruviel tries to say something further, in outraged tones, but Finn holds up his unwounded hand. “Good _day_ , Lord Aruviel.” 

His heart hammers as he walks down the corridor. Aruviel is going to tell, now. He is going to tell, and they are going to know. They will decommission him, or maybe lock him away for being the beneficiary of blood magic. It’s a legal grey area, and Finn isn’t sure where he would fall at this point, but one thing is certain: he will never leave Innilokun Ríki alive. A month ago, he would have been relieved. Now, to his surprise, the thought makes him sad and afraid. 

“Mr. Weber,” the guard at the door says, and with a heavy sigh, he turns, shoulders sagging, telegraphing a submission he doesn’t quite feel so that they won’t just shoot him right here. She smiles kindly while patting him down. “That invitation you showed me... I bet you’re Melantha’s boyfriend, aren’t you?”

“I am,” he says. His strong, steady voice that he was so proud of a second ago is now faint and husky.

“I could tell. Your expression is pretty much reserved for his kids and their significant others.” She banishes the binding spell on him. “Well, I hope the day gets better from here on in.” 

“Thanks,” Finn says wonderingly. He stands, waiting. Has no one said anything? Has she not noticed?

Then the guard reaches for him, and as her hand closes on his shoulder, the world of possibilities that had once so terrified Finn starts to collapse around him. But she only gently leads him to the mouth of the corridor between worlds, and pats his arm. “There’s a coffee shop just around the corner from the Oslo portal. They do the second best hot chocolate in the city, as far as I’m concerned. You can sit and collect yourself.” The guard looks down and frowns then, and Finn realizes, the blood, he’s still bleeding that weird in-between blood. “Did he hurt you?”

“It’s nothing,” Finn says, drawing his hand away.

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure,” Finn says. “Do you, uh... want anything? At the coffee shop?”

The guard smiles. “No, sweetie. I’m good.” 

He turns, and starts along the corridor. 

“Oh! Mr. Weber? Mr. Weber, come back, please.”

He turns, fighting a wild impulse to run. If he runs, she can just close the portal, or dump him someplace even less hospitable.

She holds something out to him. “I forgot to give you back your pen.”

“Oh! Uh, thanks! Ha-ha... wouldn’t want to forget that.” He walks out on shaky legs. She buzzes him into Oslo, and he steps into the sweet relief of Midgard. The nissen wishes him a good day. 

He totters to the coffee shop, and sits down at the first table he finds, before he can fall down. In a minute he will get up and go to the counter and order. 

A young lios alfr in an employee’s apron approaches, and maybe he should be worried about being thrown out now, but he is all out of terror. She brings a glass of water to his table. “Here, sir. Are you all right?”

A lios alfr is calling him sir. “I will be,” he says. “I’m sorry... I’ll go up and order something in a minute, but right now I just need to sit.”

“What would you like?” she asks him. “I’m here, I might as well take your order.”

“That, uh, hot chocolate I hear such good things about.” As he talks, he fumbles his wallet out of his pocket. One hand isn’t working so well, and the other is still shaking, but he manages to pull out a couple of notes. “Medium, with a shot of espresso. Thank you. Keep the change. Thank you so much.” 

When she brings it to him, she brings him an alcohol wipe, a pen for drawing knitting glyphs, and a couple of band-aids. Finn cleans and dresses his wound, and he sits, and he thinks, and he drinks a hot chocolate with espresso that is, by his own standards, about a dice four. He runs through everything with a dispassion that he has not been capable of, these past few weeks. 

Meeting Melantha’s father has gone surprisingly well.

He is still not good at standing up for himself. That will have to change, if he is going to live as a person in this world. And the threat of losing everything has made him realize that he _does_ want to live, and he wants to keep what he has, and he wants more. He will work on changing it. Realistically speaking, it will take a long time. It will be a process. He is okay with that.

In the meantime, Vegard was right: he can stand up for other people. Judging by what happened back there, he might even be good at it. Every time Finn tells himself that he is less than a full person because he has been a changeling, he is asserting that Brynjar and every other changeling is less than a full person. Every time he tells himself he doesn’t deserve joy because he feels guilty or afraid or mired in self-loathing, he is squandering what Vegard gave him. Every time he thinks he should just give up and let himself be caught, he puts Vegard in danger of being arrested and going to that awful place. Every time he defers to Melantha because that feels like his place, he is proving her utter tool of a father right. That’s not an indictment, he won’t _let_ it be an indictment, because it is the truth and he won’t let it get tied up in the things he tells himself that he knows are unfair. Aruviel was at least right about the importance of connections, and Finn cannot pretend that his actions have no consequences for the people he loves.

He gingerly fishes the summons from Aruviel out of his pocket. Holding the pen in his left hand, he writes on the back of it, in big clumsy letters

> I am going to LIVE!!!

He thinks again, and adds

> when I can

His left-handed writing is getting neater, even with this little bit of practice.

> & I’m not going to beat myself up when I can’t, because  
>  1) it doesn’t help  
>  ~~B)~~ 2) beating me up is wrong  
>  3) I am smaller and weaker and newer than the things that want me not to live and sometimes I am going to lose and that is okay  
>  & not my fault

When he finally gets up from his table, to bring his cup and the pen back and thank the barista one more time, he still feels shaky, but it’s a different kind of shaky. He feels somehow clean. He walks into an Oslo spring night that feels more like a gift than a burden, and catches the tram, and thinks some more about what to do with his freedom.

Melantha is already home when he gets there. He skins off his jacket and kicks off his shoes and flies into her arms. She holds on tight. “I was starting to worry. Finn? You’re shaking. Are you okay? Where were you?”

He bites back the apology on the tip of his tongue, and the guilty lie that really wants to follow it. Bravely, he turns it into a kiss, and she relaxes against him, and kisses him back. “I got a note from your father,” he says. “He wanted to meet me.”

“And you went? Alone? Oh, Finn... Are you okay?”

Finn finds himself smiling in spite of himself. “He stabbed me a little, and then he lectured me on how I’m not a real person, and then... it gets a little fuzzy, but I think I might have told him to shove it.”

“You... you’re kidding!”

“No.”

She has found his hand, with the band-aids. “Oh, you poor lamb. What were you thinking, going to see Daddy on your own?”

“Everyone’s telling me to be more independent,” he says with a shrug. His hand screams at him, but the rest of him is still buzzing with nervous energy. “Hey, can Brynjar and I make dinner?”

“Finn, sweetie, I keep telling you you don’t have to do these things.”

“I want to,” he says. “I want to learn how to cook. I think I’d like it.”

\- VIII -

The library is a weekly thing now. They are sitting in the Starbucks, glamoured as a couple of little old men, making each other laugh with wry observations about the people around them, when Brynjar excuses himself suddenly. Finn thinks nothing of it--Melantha cooked last night--until he hears a commotion out on the street.

By the time he gets out there, Brynjar is sprawled on the ground, and a small crowd has formed. His assailant, a wiry, young, sharp-faced white human man, paces in front of him, fists clenched.

An old woman touches Finn’s arm. “He just hit that old disabled man and kicked his cane from under him!”

“The old guy was drunk, and he said something disgusting about my son.” The wiry man nods back at a thin dark-haired boy, and a woman whose face is pinched with anger and fear.

The old woman bends down and prods Brynjar, who has curled up rigid on the pavement, rocking a little. “Is that true? Then you ought to be ashamed of yourself, sir.”

“Perv,” says a brown-skinned boy with a skateboard, and a white woman with spike heels adds, “You deserved that.”

Finn positions himself between the crowd and his brother, in case anyone gets any ideas. He hauls Brynjar to a sitting position and props him against the side of the building. It fills his injured hand with a sickish ache. Brynjar keeps rocking. He starts to hum. All around them, people on the street flinch and frown at their phones and MP3 players. Brynjar is calming himself down, and Finn leaves him to it. 

Guiltily, furtively, he reaches out and ties his awareness to the little family. He never does this, he doesn’t want to now, but he needs to know what happened. In a rush he understands what Brynjar said to upset them, and his guilt evaporates in fury. 

They have hurried away, and the crowd has dispersed. He could get them back right now and have a very public moment of triumph that would be satisfying and vindicating and probably make things worse later on. Instead, he fetches his things and Brynjar’s from the table inside. There is a small sealed envelope there, where there wasn’t before, and he takes that too. He sits down next to Brynjar on the pavement, and tears the envelope open.

The little card inside, written in elegant script, says:

> Having given it some thought, I have decided to disregard your insult, and let the natural course of events work justice for me. After all, how would it reflect upon me if it were found out that I bore ill will to a piece of furniture? You are nothing more. Sooner or later, you will betray yourself, and my daughter and everyone else you play-act at caring about will know you for a fraud, without my having to lift a finger.
> 
> Enjoy it while you can.
> 
> L.A.

Finn tucks the card into his pocket. He watches the crowds, and feels his hand throb in time with his heart.

Brynjar stops rocking after a little while, and watches him. 

When the time is right, Finn pulls out the cell phone that he inherited, in a roundabout way, from Bård. He’s out of minutes, but it will still make the call he needs to make. He gives them a name and an address and says, “The family just got home, and he’s screaming at his son, things no little boy should have to hear. If you examine the child, you will find old belt marks on his shoulders, and other signs of other kinds of abuse.” He ends the call, and sinks down against the wall next to Brynjar.

“She wondered what were wrong with her son,” Brynjar says softly. Finn prods a little, and they take down their glamour. There is a bruise along Brynjar’s cheekbone. “It seemed urgent enough to telling her, but she believed me not.”

“They were wrong,” Finn assures him. “That whole crowd... they shouldn’t have believed him. They shouldn’t have done that to you. Can you see? Are the police...?” 

Brynjar looks into the distance for a moment, and frowns a little. “It are not yet an emergency in their eyes, but they are sendifying a car to inquire.”

A krone bounces to the pavement in front of them. 

A barista sticks her head out the door. “I’m sorry, but we can’t really have you two sitting out there. There’s a table free inside, if you like.”

Finn scrambles up. Brynjar grabs his stick and pulls himself slowly to his feet. He holds the remains of his frappuccino to his cheek, and they follow her inside, where she shows them to the table they just vacated. She takes a hard look at them as they sit down. “Aren’t you two on TV?”

“I wish,” says Finn with a smile. “Thank you, though.”

When she is gone, Brynjar leans forward. “Does you? Wish?”

“Why not? So far our other options are panhandling, and having you tell other people uncomfortable truths and hoping they pay you instead of beat you up.”

“You sees how hard I try to behave myself, dear Finn, but I does not want to close my mind or my mouth.” Brynjar meets his eyes calmly. “Nor does you. What just happened feeled awful, but it also feeled good. To tell the truth, with the safeness of a screen between us and those we speak to... I would liking that.”

Finn thinks this over. “Brynjar, are you serious about this? Because we, I mean, this is a place where we _do_ have connections. But I wouldn’t want to use them unless we were absolutely serious.”

“We are no longerer bound, but we were maked to simulate entertainers, and Brynjar Kvam and Finn Weber were maked to entertain. I has thinked long and deep about my thralldom, Finn. Where the things I was maked to be stop, and I begin. This... are deeply rooted. To broadcast is in my bones and my soul. It are not odious to me, and it offers a possible solutionation to the problems of how to do well, and how to do good.”

“This is a huge thing, though,” Finn says. “We’d need to decide on a format, and ideas. We would need to put something together before we even approach anyone.” He frowns, and pulls out his pen and the card from Aruviel. He starts making a list on the back of it, of things that they will need and things that they have to find out. 

“It are good to see you excited, Finn.” The bruise rising on Brynjar’s face is the colour of storm clouds, but his smile is sunshine itself.

\- IX -

The day is warm, and Vegard is sitting on the porch, under a blanket, dozing. Finn sits crosslegged at his feet, squinting at a book, and waits.

“Finn,” Vegard says sleepily. “How long have you been here?” 

“Half an hour or so. Helene knows.” Finn scrambles up, and hands Vegard a plastic container full of pastry. “This batch I made myself. It looks a little funny, but I think it tastes okay. Raspberry cheese filling.”

“Wow,” Vegard says, taking the lid off. “You made these yourself? I’m impressed!” He draws one out. It’s explodey and very lopsided. He bites into it, and whatever he says next is so muffled as to be unintelligible, but it is unmistakably approval.

“I still need to practice.” Finn also needs to be able to roll them out evenly without whimpering, but he doesn’t say that part. “Next batch will be better,” he vows, hand on his heart. 

Vegard frowns then, and takes him gently but firmly by the forearm. He looks at the puncture, first on the back of Finn’s hand, and then bending Finn’s arm at the elbow to look at the entrance wound in the palm. “This is infected,” he says. “What happened?”

“Oh, that. I met Melantha’s dad.”

Vegard nods like he’s not surprised. “Attacked me with a sword the first time we met,” he says. “Show this to Helene. Go in and do it right now. She’ll know what to do.”

What she does is bundle the kids into the van, take Finn to the emergency room, and present Vegard’s identification. Freak embroidery accident, Finn tells the doctor, which makes her smile. She wants the nurse to take blood, and Finn panics, but Helene says, “You took a lot of blood last week.” They insist. Helene convinces them to put it off until his follow-up. 

They cluck their tongues at him, but they drain the pus from his hand, dress it, and give him a prescription for antibiotics, which Helene pays to fill at the pharmacy. “They probably should have given you a tetanus shot,” she mutters, “but Vegard is all up to date.”

The kids have been promised ice cream if they can go the entire hospital visit without calling him Finn. Everyone gets a cone, and Helene is all ready to pay when Finn teases the money out of his wallet. It is the last he has. It is also the least he can do. She lets him.

Vegard’s ice cream is a little drippy when they get back. They got him chocolate; it’s a safe bet. Still dozing on the porch, he rouses, and opens his eyes, and opens them wider when Emma puts the cone into his hand. “Oh, thank you, honey!” He ruffles her hair, and she sits at his feet to finish her own ice cream. Mads is already finished, and building mazes out of sticks. The baby paints the porch, and himself, and his siblings, and his parents, and Finn, with ice cream. 

Finn sits on the steps, savouring every bite of his mint chocolate chip cone, and watches Vegard and Helene with their children. He thinks, with fond melancholy, of his own, dozens or hundreds at this point, straight and quiet and still and right now bare. In another month they will be a riot of colour and scent and soft petals, some for the very first time. He will never have any more. He will never again feel his own buds burst into bloom, or a bee’s legs caressing his stamens and carpels. He will never again bear fruit. 

His first impulse is to castigate himself. After everything Helene and Vegard have just done for him, he shouldn’t be moping. 

Then in his mind he takes a step back, and gives this a really good think. It was part of his life, a big part, a _good_ part. And it ended, suddenly and against his will. Surely there’s no ingratitude in grieving that.

But he is still here, and his children are still there. They will go on without him, and there’s comfort in that. And he will go on too. How many get that option? How many, trees or men or elves or Underjordiske or changelings or _anyone_ , have the gifts he’s been given? 

The baby toddles up to him, and frowns. He reaches up with his ice-cream-covered napkin and brushes away Finn’s tears, covering his face in Spider-Man ice cream.

“Oh, Daniel,” Helene cries in amused reproach. She rummages in the baby bag and comes up with a moist towelette. And then, because Finn is still holding his ice cream cone in one hand and the other is swathed in bandages, she cleans him off. “Are you all right?”

“I’m a bit emotional,” he says. “You two have a really beautiful family.”

Vegard chuckles. “We aren’t giving you ideas, are we?”

The idea brings him up short. “I don’t know,” he says softly. But that would be something, wouldn’t it? 

Helene brings the kids in to get cleaned up. Finn is still nibbling at his ice cream, making it last. 

He’s pretty sure that Vegard has fallen asleep again until he says, very softly, “Are you glad, Finn?”

Finn weighs everything: the ache in his hand and the terror in his heart, the thousand tiny kindnesses that people have shown him. The shaky satisfaction of notes and manifestos scrawled clumsily on the backs of hate mail, the thrill of defending those he cares about, the magic and the challenge of a blank page. The voice of his brother, the weight of a great wolf’s paws, the memory of Melantha’s skin against his, the smell of the sea, the taste of mint chocolate chip, the pink and orange of the sunset, the feel of recently shed tears and Spider-Man ice cream on the bridge of his nose. He looks at the tapestry of experiences and emotions and sensations that he is weaving for himself, and he finds that it is beautiful. He can weep for what is past, but it’s still a part of him, and he wants very much to keep going. 

“I am,” he says.

He’s spent too long thinking about it. The only answer he gets is a gentle snore.


End file.
